No Filter | Sarah Frier

Instagram is one of the two social media apps that I use regularly and when I see a book about it, I couldn't think so much about if it should be in my reading list or not, I definitely should read and learn more about it, so I just started.

It wasn't a book of "wow"s for me, it didn't enlighten me but anyway it was still a good book to learn more about Facebook and Zuckerberg. 

So let me share my highlights from Sarah Frier's "No Filter":

With the rise of Instagram, Beco do Batman has become one of São Paulo’s top tourist destinations. Via the vacation rental site Airbnb, various vendors charge about $40 per person to provide two hours of “personal paparazzi” in the alley, taking high-quality pictures of people to post on Instagram; the service is a type that’s become one of Airbnb’s most popular for its travelers in cities around the world.

For amateur photographers, the only cost is the stress of perfection.

Each month, more than 1 billion of us use Instagram. We take photos and videos of our food, our faces, our favorite scenery, our families, and our interests and share them, hoping that they reflect something about who we are or who we aspire to be.

Skin In The Game | Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In Skin In The Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains how the willingness of accepting one’s own risks is an important quality of heroes, saints and successful people in all walks of life. 

Skin In The Game is about the distortions of symmetry and reciprocity in life. If you have the rewards, you must also get some of the risks and not let others pay the price of your mistakes.

Here are my highlights from the book:

If you have the rewards, you must also get some of the risks, not let others pay the price of your mistakes. If you inflict risk on others, and they are harmed, you need to pay some price for it.

Don’t tell me what you “think,” just tell me what’s in your portfolio.

The Power of One More | Ed Mylett

It is another personal development or self motivation book that I read and honestly speaking, I liked the content and flow. This is the book I met with Ed Mylett and after completing the reading of this book, I started to follow Ed in twitter which is a sign that I liked him. I have 9 pages of highlights from Ed's book. I have read the last part of the book in a Starbucks with a melancholic mood and the book was a great friend for me at that time and place. So let's see what I highlight:

At its core, The Power of One More is about your willingness to do one more rep, make one more phone call, get up one hour earlier, build one more relationship, or do one more thing for whatever your situation calls for.

You can find your best life by doing “one more” than the world expects from you.

The individual thoughts and actions you take don't need to be profound. However, when you compound these small thoughts and actions and stack them up on top of each other, the resulting changes over time are profound.

“Winning is more fun than fun is fun.”

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

 —Andy Warhol

Deep inside, you know what's true about you.

What we perceive about ourselves is what we believe about ourselves.

Nobody is ever always right. As a child, you accepted much of what you were told, right or wrong. Your identity became the good and the bad parts of how other people influenced you. The unfortunate thing is that you were defenseless. Your critical thinking skills did not exist to give you the tools you needed to survive in the world.

As you grew older, you began to confirm your identity. If someone said you weren't a good student or a lousy athlete, that became a part of your identity. You still didn't have the capacity to disavow what you were being told. You grew into adulthood, and you carried with you these beliefs about yourself. Your identity had taken root. Your limitations became a part of you, and because they were so ingrained, you weren't even sure where they came from.

The Intelligent Investor | Benjamin Graham & Jason Zweig

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made "The Intelligent Investor" the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949. Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles. For me, “The Intelligent Investor" is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals. Just enjoy and learn from the quotes from my highlights, and then apply them to your life.

Podcast Version of the Intelligent Investor

Preface to the Fourth Edition, by Warren E. Buffett

To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.

Give and Take | Adam Grant

In Give and Take, Adam Grant, an award-winning researcher and Wharton’s highest-rated professor, examines the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom. Praised by social scientists, business theorists, and corporate leaders, Give and Take opens up an approach to work, interactions, and productivity that is nothing short of revolutionary. This book was a summer read for me and I highlighted a lot quotes in Adam’s Grant’s “Give and Take”.

Good Returns

According to conventional wisdom, highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck.

How Are You, Really? | Jenna Kutcher

Generally, when I am trying to find a book to read, I visit amazon.com and check out the most sellers in business and biographies. It was a weekend like this and I was updating my Kobo ebook reader with new contents and I just saw that Amazon advises this book: “How are you, really?” by Jenna Kutcher. This honest and natural question interested me and I have a quick look about its comments. Then I visited goodreads.com and saw the high rating and I decided to download. It was one of the many books I uploaded to my ebook reader that weekend but because of its tempting name, I decided to start reading this book first. And I am glad to have read it. It is maybe another personal development book that motivates you but it does not repeat the same things with the other ones. It clearly states how Jenna manages her success story. It is authentic and it makes it unique. I like it as a summer read and I highly advise it to those who do not stop and check how she/he is. In the meantime, how are your, really?

The truth is, we lie. We lie to ourselves about how we’re really feeling and what we really want. Not anymore. In How Are You, Really?, Jenna Kutcher teaches how to harness your power to take control of your life. You deserve more – and deep down, you know it. If, when you get really honest with yourself, you discover that you want more out of your life: more joy, more passion, more fulfillment, and more peace? In today’s chaotic world, sometimes you might wake up and not feel like yourself anymore, and you don’t even know how you are… REALLY. You’re trying to balance it all: your family, your work, and your goals, but your emotions are all over the place and you don’t feel as confident and happy as you thought you would. This book is a guide to reframing your entire life and finally finding your own sense of joy and fulfillment in a world telling you who to be. It’s about understanding what’s going on in your head and finding your way back to a life that is truly your own. Your expert guide is Jenna Kutcher, who started from working a day job at Target to building an empire while living in a small town in Minnesota as a mom. In her inspirational debut book, she shares how she struggled with these same issues to find her identity and balance in launching a business, raising a family, and, eventually, starting her popular podcast The Goal Digger. Join the millions of people who count on Jenna’s life and business advice every week because of her authentic example and deep understanding of how women think and strive to achieve their dreams. It’s time to ask yourself the question you’ve been avoiding: How are you, really? It’s time to find your answer, and start living.

The Psychology of Money | Morgan Housel

When you read the title of the book, you might guess that it is only about money and maybe business, but it is about life. With the real time stories shared by Morgan Housel, this book makes stories meaningful and let you know more about personal finance, investment, wealth creation and living a better life.

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.